


hoping this light will guide you home

by Razia



Category: Gris (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Self-Sacrifice, Taking Events Literally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28145601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razia/pseuds/Razia
Summary: A broken statue, an ancient land, and a throat with no voice.Gris has sacrificed so much already, and she's willing to sacrifice even more, if it means fixing what has been broken.
Relationships: Gris & Forest Friend (Gris), Gris & Statue (Gris)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	hoping this light will guide you home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [straightforwardly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/straightforwardly/gifts).



> Dear giftee, thank you so much for giving me the “take the game’s events literally” prompt, I love it so much! Since finishing the game I couldn’t stop thinking about what could be going on if the events actually happened, and when I read your prompt I was super happy :D
> 
> This is obviously canon divergence, so some game events might happen differently, as well as game mechanics either not being present or being modified, for the sake of storytelling.
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Title is from [When the Darkness Comes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNleC7ylvkQ), by Colbie Caillat.

Morning light reaches Gris slowly, lazily, catching the fog and casting a white haze on her surroundings. It takes a while for it to warm the stone under her; the sun is weak these days, rising later and later. At first the change had been so subtle that she had barely noticed, but now, after years of doing the exact same thing every day, she can see where the nights extend, slowly eating away at daylight.

For the past few months she’s been wondering if this is the day the sun doesn’t rise. It hasn’t failed yet.

She rises from her lying position and stretches, appreciating the warmth, weak as it is. To call what she does sleeping would be a mistake; she doesn’t sleep anymore, but she does need to rest from time to time. Sometimes she just bundles up in a corner and closes her eyes, imagining a life beyond her own. Sometimes she remembers her small village, her little family, her garden of flowers that she never knew the names of. The memories are hazy now, lost amidst the endless cycle of song and rest, song and rest.

She can’t remember most of their faces, but her mother’s laugh and her little sister's giggles are engraved in her mind. Her father’s voice is still strong as well, warnings and endearments and the heartbreaking worry when she told him she was leaving.

Their village got smaller every year. Diseases that had no cure wiping off entire families, people wasting away even when they seemed healthy, fruits falling off trees already black, grains rotting in the fields before harvest season. Animals becoming rarer and rarer as their offspring didn't survive.

Their world was dying, slowly, by increments, each day greyer than the other.

There had been whispers between the elders, that the gods had abandoned them. No amount of rituals and offers seemed to work, and they couldn't afford to sacrifice the only animals they had.

After Gris' mother died of something unknown, one day healthy and happy only to suddenly collapse and not get up, she had decided that something needed to be done. There was an old, old map in one of her father's books. It was faded, the edges eaten by bugs, but it still held colors and letters, and even though she could barely read, she could still follow the directions.

Making the decision itself had been easy. Telling her family of her plans had been the most difficult of all. Even though she can't remember her father's face very well, she remembers vividly the way his eyes had shined with tears. Her little sister had cried the hardest, though, hugging her leg and begging her not to go. But Gris could hear the way she coughed late at night, could see the way their father looked at his little daughter with something broken in his expression. It was bad timing, she knew. They were all still reeling from her mother's death, but Gris didn't want to see her family fade away like so many others.

Someone had to do something. It might as well be her.

Armed with an old map, a change of clothes and the little food her father had managed to scrounge, Gris had fled into the night, like a fugitive. If the elders knew what she was doing, there would be outrage. Her father would be blamed for not keeping her wild imagination in check, and her sister would be ostracized from the little circle of children their village had. So they would simply say she ran away, too caught up in grief to stay in a place that brought so many memories of her mother.

It was half the truth, and those were the best lies.

The first day had been weird and exciting. She could almost convince herself that she was simply going on an adventure, and that she would be back home soon. Rationing the food, finding the best spot to sleep, and making sure she didn't stray from her course had been important tasks that had kept her mind away from the worry threatening to overwhelm her.

The fifth day, when the food had ended and her feet hurt, had been one of the hardest. Sleeping well was only a wish, because every time Gris closed her eyes, she was plagued with nightmares of her village turning into grey dust, swept away by the wind as if it had never been there, or her father falling down while in the fields, never getting up, just like her mother. Or her little sister getting sicker and sicker, fever so high she cried from pain.

Gris had been swimming in guilt and doubt in that first week, shakily marking the days at the back of the map with her sloppy penmanship. Her father had never learned his letters, but he kept all the books he could get his hands on because her mother had loved them so much. It wasn't like her mother knew everything either, but she knew enough to read her daughters bedtime stories, and what she couldn't read, she had made up. Gris had learned from her all that she could.

It still hurt, sometimes, to think she had to leave. Who was going to teach her little sister how to read and write?

But she'd rather have her alive.

By the eight day, she had lost hope of ever reaching the place she had named the Land of the Gods. It had no official name on the map, but it seemed fitting, and giving it a name made it sound more real, like a place she could actually reach.

On the morning of her ninth day, she had finally gotten to the X, as far as she could tell from her meager navigation skills.

There was nothing there.

Just a wide expanse of white sand as far as the eye could see, no trees or rocks or any kind of wildlife. It was like all the color, all the life, had been sucked away from it. Desperation had crawled up her throat, but Gris grit her teeth and dug down into the sand, wanting to find some sort of marking, or writing, or anything that could tell her where she was and if she was on the right path. Maybe it had been buried under all that sand; there was a woman in the village who always told tales of the desert and how the sands could swallow cities whole.

Gris had never seen a city, but they sounded like something big, and if the sands could bury them, then they could bury anything.

She had dug for what felt like hours, refusing to accept that she was never going to find anything. She was a tiny girl in a big desert, and she had no power to move the sand to her will.

Her desperation had finally spilled into tears, and Gris had sat there, knees burning in the hot whiteness, the skin of her hands almost raw from digging. At that point, she could do one of two things; go back home and admit defeat, or keep walking and maybe find something she had missed.

Or maybe she could just sit there and let the sand swallow her too.

The thought was tempting.

 _Do not fall into despair._ The words had sprang into her mind without any conscious thought. It was something her mother had liked to say, when things got hard, when the harvest didn’t bring enough to feed them all, when the butterflies in her tiny garden had died one by one, until they were only a tale from her childhood.

Do not fall into despair, Gris had repeated to herself, getting up and walking forward. Step by step, she kept at it, by sheer desperation of not letting this whole trip be in vain. By the time nightfall had come, she was certain she was going to die there, in the white, and no one would ever find her. Maybe one day someone would try to dig into the sand and find her bones. She had laid there, in her makeshift bed made of stitched up scraps of fabric, and stared at the stars.

It had taken her a few minutes to realize something was out of place.

The stars she had grown up with were all in the wrong places. The constellations she knew by heart weren’t there. She couldn’t find the Tree, or the Playful Cat, or even the Heart, which could be seen all year from her vantage point on the roof of her house.

All the stars were in the wrong places, as if they had shifted from the night before.

All, except for the ones that formed the Arrow.

The Arrow was another constellation that could be seen all year. It had always pointed south, but her father didn’t know where it led to, even though he was the one who taught her about the stars and how to navigate with them. South of the village had been a no man’s land, unexplored, and no one was ever allowed to go there.

The thought had sprung into her mind like a star winking into view in the evening.

There was something about that sky; it couldn’t have been a coincidence that the only recognizable thing was shaped like an arrow, pointing onwards, further into the desert, into the whiteness that seemed to have no end. She was going to follow the Arrow until she could walk no more, and then she was going to crawl if she had to.

Decision made, Gris had packed her stuff and started walking again.

And then she had lost track of time and place.

There was no cycle of day and night there, wherever she was, and the dunes were so alike that she couldn’t tell how much she had walked. Her world had been reduced to the Arrow and the white sand and her steps, one by one, always moving, always forward. At some point she had realized she wasn’t hungry, or thirsty, or tired. She wasn’t anything but movement.

To this day Gris has no idea how long she walked. But the memory of the end of her path will be engraved forever in her mind, along with what she still remembers of her family.

It had been night still, dark purple sky over her head and white sand beneath her feet, the gleaming stars her only company and her only source of light.

And there, in the distance, something huge. It had seemed to loom over her, even though she was so far away that she hadn’t been able to tell what it was at first. But as she kept walking, the form became clearer and clearer under the starlight, until Gris found herself standing a few meters away from the biggest statue she had ever seen.

She had ever only heard about them, in tales told by her mother and some of the traders that showed up at her village sometimes, of statues so big they could touch the sky. Gris didn’t really think statues could literally reach the sky, no matter what other people said, but this one was still impressive. It was a woman, naked, with beautiful long hair and a beautiful face, something divine in her aura. But she had still looked strangely human there, in the middle of desert, as alone as Gris.

And then it had dawned on her what she was looking at.

Gris had fallen to her knees, the anxiety she kept at bay finally catching up to her. She touched her forehead to the ground and wept like a child, letting out the bundle of feelings she had kept close to her heart during her infinite walk towards something she hadn’t been sure she was going to find.

After a few minutes of crying and letting the relief wash over her, she finally regained some control and leapt to her feet, eager to pray to the statue and hoping that whatever goddess this one represented might answer her. She looked up and up at the face so far above hers, and stared at the closed eyes.

“Hello,” she said, voice cracking on the word from going so long without use. “I have journeyed here to ask for a...” To ask for what? A favor? How presumptuous, to think the gods would grant her any favors.

“I... I have come to pray for you. We— my village, we are dying. Nothing grows, nothing lasts in our land. We can’t trade because we don’t have anything.” She chokes on her last word, wanting to cry again, lips wobbling uncontrollably. It had been days since she had allowed herself to think of her home, of their plight, of everything she had left behind.

“Please. People get sick and die from nothing, it’s been like that for years now, even before I was born, and it’s just getting worse and worse. I don’t have much to offer, but I can stay here and pray as much as you want. Please, help my home. And the other places too. It’s been so hard. Please. _Please._ ”

Silence had been her only answer.

_Do not fall into despair._

Easier said than done, but she had found something, and she was going to cling to it with all her strength.

She had knelt by the statue’s feet and kept up her prayers, offering herself and everything she was, which wasn’t much, but it was all she had. After what felt like hours of praying and almost out of voice, Gris had had a brief moment of true panic, before trying her last resort. It was something she liked to do when she was alone, usually when she had chores around the house, or if she had to patch up someone’s clothes, or if someone asked for help with their garden.

She closed her eyes and sang.

The song had no words. She had made the melody up after learning to sing with her neighbour, an old man, the best singer their village had. He was the one who sang at the festivals, on the rare occasions they had something to celebrate.

She had poured everything she could into it. All her grief and her love and her desperation, all the times she had thought of going back home, all the times she convinced herself to keep going.

It had taken all her concentration not to stop singing when another voice joined hers.

It was lower than her own, and as beautiful as the goddess herself. She opened her eyes and found a pair of stone grey ones looking back at her from up high. The face was still impassive, expression frozen into something neutral, but the eyes—the eyes, stone as they were, had so much life in them that Gris could have never doubted what resided inside.

When the song ended, the goddess moved one of her hands and set it next to Gris. The movement made some stone bits fall to the ground, and only then had Gris noticed something that should have been obvious. The statue was cracked all over. It wasn’t really a surprise, though. Only the goddess knew how long her statue had been there, untended. The reality of the situation fell over her; not even this, the last bastion of divinity, was safe from the passage of time and the dying of the world.

She looked at the hand waiting patiently for her. It was so big, the grey stone that looked smooth from afar actually rough from up close, with a blue tint to it. She got on the hand and crouched down as it moved, bringing her closer to the statue’s face. When she was at chin level, the hand stopped, and Gris had made the incredible effort not to look down. She hadn’t really want to know how far from the ground she was.

Looking up made her feel nervous as well, but she couldn’t keep the goddess waiting.

The eyes staring back at her had seemed curious.

_“Hello, little robin.”_

Gris gasped, somehow not expecting the voice even after their duet. Why would the goddess even talk to her?

 _“You have come from far away, haven’t you?”_ The goddess had cocked her head slightly, eyes looking into the distance. _“Yes, from very far away indeed.”_

Gris had just stood there, gaping, but the goddess hadn’t seemed to mind. She never minds Gris’ mannerisms and curiosity.

_“I heard your prayers and couldn’t answer. You woke me with your beautiful song.”_

“Oh, I— I mean, thank you! Er, I mean! You’re welcome? No, that’s not—” Gris slammed a hand over her mouth shut in shame, but the goddess had only chuckled at her.

_“I am glad to have company, though I imagine you don’t quite know the price to pay for what you have asked me.”_

“I will pay anything.”

_“Careful, little robin. ‘Anything’ is a dangerous word.”_

“I— I know! But I’ll do it! I promise! Please, you haven’t seen the state of my home.” Gris had felt the desperation clawing at her again. Oh, if the goddess turned her away, what would she do? Go back home in defeat and watch as her little village slowly withered away?

_“You will sacrifice anything?”_

“Yes!”

_“Even your freedom?”_

“Yes.”

_“Even your life?”_

“...Yes.”

_“What a brave little one you are.”_

The goddess brought her closer still, her expression serious, and all mirth gone from her voice.

_“I have very little power left, as you can imagine. If you sing, you can help me channel that power. It might bring some life back into the world.”_

“Yes, I’ll do it!”

 _“However,”_ the goddess had interrupted her, _“I cannot tell how long it will hold.”_

“Anything it’s better than nothing.”

The goddess had stared at her for a moment, unblinking, still. Gris had been so, so afraid that she was going to be rejected. That stone gaze had seemed to reach into her and bring everything out into the open, her hopes and fears and the long hours of searching.

_“Then let us get started.”_

The relief was so freeing and powerful that she had almost fallen to her knees.

And then they had sung the whole night, Gris weaving her old songs with new ones she made on the spot. She had felt something shift inside her, something new making a little place for itself inside her chest. Something holy.

When she had finally stopped singing, after what felt like long hours, she had opened her eyes—didn’t even realize they were closed—to the first morning she had seen since setting foot in the desert.

The clouds around the statue had taken on different hues of colors, and even the stone seemed to have gained other tones, though they were subtle.

Gris had understood, then, what she had done, and what she needed to keep doing if she wanted to see the world turn for a few more years; maybe even a few more decades if luck held. She was forever bound to this duty now, forfeiting her freedom and her life to servitude to the goddess.

There had been a little moment of regret. Just a moment. But she had pushed it down, far down into the recesses of her mind.

She had made her decision.

Gris blinks her eyes open, a little shocked that she let herself drift so much inside her memories. It must be close to the second solstice of the year. She always gets more lethargic and morose around those times, and the goddess’ power is always weaker. It makes Gris nervous, the persistent thought of ‘what if this is the last time?’ always present at the back of her mind.

She shakes her head and gets ready for another long day of singing and resting and keeping together the cycle around her. She doesn’t get to enjoy the new life she knows is blossoming somewhere that is not here, but she is content in the knowledge that she helps.

She opens her mouth and lets the first notes slip out of her, automatic at this point, and lets herself enjoy it.

The first cracks come in the middle of the third song.

They’re subtle at first, easy to ignore. It’s not like the statue isn’t falling apart already, millenia of being exposed to the weather showing in the missing pieces, the unstable patches of stone that Gris is always very careful when stepping on.

So at first she doesn’t notice anything wrong, too worried in getting the notes right, getting that high-pitched note in the right place, feeling it resonate inside her head.

The sound of stone breaking is so surprising that, at first, she thinks it’s thunder. She looks up, still singing, but the sky is as clear as always, not one dark cloud anywhere. No clouds at all on this day, actually. Rain has always been incredibly rare, not only here, but back at her village as well.

She closes her eyes and keeps on singing her favorite part of the song, thoughts intent on keeping the world turning, even as it seems to want to stop.

**crack**

Gris opens her eyes again, without meaning to, startled by the sound.

**crack crack crack**

That’s not thunder.

Years of practice keep her voice going as she looks down and experiences one of the most terrifying moments of her life, comparable to the terror of reaching the white desert and thinking her search had been in vain.

The goddess’ hand cracks beneath her, creating fissures bigger than her head and threatening her balance. Her throat closes up on a difficult note, and a shiver of cold fear runs down her body. She pushes herself to keep going, to get to the end the song, and her voice comes once, and twice, and then it stops completely.

Gris brings her hands to her throat, desperation rising in her chest.

She looks at the goddess’ face, impassive as always, eyes closed in slumber.

_Goddess, please._

It’s been something close to a year since she heard her voice. At first, conversation had already been sparse, and as time went by the goddess lost more and more of her power, and with it her ability to communicate with Gris. She gets no answer this time, and as the cracks on the stone reach up towards the goddess’ neck, Gris has the horrifying realization that everything she’s worked for—they’ve worked for—is crumbling right before her eyes.

Her throat closes up for good, like a hand squeezing it tightly, and no matter how hard she pushes, nothing comes out.

And then, the worst.

The hand she’s standing on falls apart, and Gris has only a moment to look up and see the goddess’ face shatter, before she’s falling.

She screams in her head, mouth open, fear and panic washing over her.

The goddess is silent.

Gris falls to the ground, hard, stirring up the sand around her. Sand that is now white again, instead of the yellow it had become on that fateful night.

All around her the pieces of the statue keep falling too, hitting the ground and half-burying themselves into the sand.

_No, no! Please, no!_

She runs around touching the pieces, most of them larger and taller than her, trying to find the remains of the goddess, but they all seem dead. Nothing resonates from inside them, nothing answers back the little light inside her chest.

Gris falls to her knees, hands on her hair. “This isn’t happening,” she whispers to herself, eyes darting around her, each piece of stone she can see bringing a stab to her chest. “This is _not_ happening.”

 _Do not fall into despair_ , her mother whispers in her memories.

 _Mother_ , she thinks, close to breaking, _how?_

How is she supposed to not despair? The last chance the world had has just broken in front of her eyes, and there’s nothing Gris can do to bring it back. She knew, she knew it wouldn’t last forever, but as far as she can tell it hasn’t even been four years, and she let herself hope that there were decades still to keep singing, to watch the world turn, even as she was kept apart from it all.

She was a fool. To think she could fix what even the gods couldn’t, wouldn’t fix.

Was it worth it? Four years. Were they worth it? Did those four years bring at least a little joy to her village? What about the little town to the north, where most traders came from? And the others, so far away that she had never seen, but heard about from travelers?

Did it make any difference at all?

_Father, did I waste four years of my life?_

No, no, she wouldn’t think like that. Four years more than they had had was still good. Anything was better than nothing, after all. She had agreed to giving everything for whatever the goddess could give back, and she wasn’t going to regret her decision now.

Her eyes fall on a piece of a hand, still mostly intact.

Reality has a way of falling down upon a person when they least expect it; Gris feels the tears burn behind her eyes. She lets them fall, because she doesn’t have the strength to hold them back. She refuses to think of how she has lost yet another person in her life, how the world isn’t satisfied with just ending, no, it has to take away the people she loves first, has to make her watch as they fade away.

As they break into pieces that she can’t glue back together.

Her tears run dry after a few minutes, but Gris stays there, kneeling in the sand. In the back of her mind she knows she needs to move, but her legs don’t want to obey. The ground is white, the sky is white, the sun is white. Everything has been sucked out of colors again, just like that first night when she stumbled upon something she’s sure no mortal should have.

Gris stays there, amidst the remains of her lost friend, for a long, long time.

At some point she does get tired of simply kneeling, so she stands up. Stretches, even though she doesn’t need to. There’s no need to stretch, to sleep, to eat. She hasn’t needed anything a human might need for years now, irrevocably changed by her bond, by her oath to a being that isn’t here anymore.

The tears want to come again, but she shakes her head.

What now?

...She could go back, couldn’t she? She knows the way; just follow the Arrow constellation backwards, and sooner or later she’s going to stumble upon the forest at the edge of the desert. From there, it’s an easy path back to her village. She doesn’t have her map anymore, her bag long lost in the sand, but she remembers each and every line in it.

She could go see her father again, her little sister who’s probably not so little anymore. She wonders if they’re taking care of her garden.

She wonders if they’re still alive.

She could go back and say that she tried all that she could, tell them what—whom—she found, tell her old neighbour how her music was the key.

A memory swims to the forefront of her mind. This one is new. A place that Gris has never seen with her own eyes, a place that she knows she’s only seeing because her connection to the goddess gives her some memories that are definitely not her own. She’s seen some of these little memories over the years, but not this one. It’s a sacred place, somewhere far away, with tall buildings made of stone and glass and light, somewhere no mortal should know about, and yet it shines bright in Gris’ mind, a star among the darkness.

As if beckoning her.

It clicks, then. The X on her map had simply been the border. After that, somehow, Gris had stepped into another place, a place no map could ever hope to show. Her precious statue was at the border of a much larger place.

The true Land of the Gods.

The memory winks again, starlike, wanting her attention. Gris knows, suddenly, surely, that she can find more divine power there. That the gods left something behind, and if she can gather that something and link it to the light inside her, she can restore the statue. She can bring the goddess back, if only for a while longer. To give the world a few more years of life before it’s all taken away again.

It’s the only thing she has left.

She looks behind her, to the vastness of white, to the pieces of stone. Beyond this lies her home, her little place in the world, her family, her village. Then she looks forward, to yet more vastness and broken stone, and a faint hope of fixing what has been broken.

She looks up. No constellation visible during the day, but she knows the Arrow is there, pointing south. Always pointing south.

She walks forward, slowly at first, telling her legs to move even when the only thing they seem to want to do is fall down again. No time for grief now; she has a new destination. She’s going south.

She’s going to find what the gods left behind, and she’s going to put the statue back together, the world back together.

If only for a little longer.

The white desert is not as void of life as Gris had always thought. She spies a few birds during her walk, the sounds of their wings so strange and loud that it takes her a while to even figure out what they are. They must be birds, though no bird she’s ever seen.

Not that she’s seen many birds in her life. By the time she was born, animals were already disappearing in droves, their population dwindling year after year. Most of the animals that ate meat had gone first, the big ones, nature incapable of keeping up with the demand for food. Then the ones that ate plants started slowly fading too. She mostly knows the small ones, the rabbits and the chickens and the cats, easier to feed and keep alive, and still providing food when the season is harsh.

The birds fly above her, uncaring. Gris wonders if they know how close they are to the end.

Part of her also wonders where they’re coming from.

She keeps walking.

The monotony of white is finally broken by rocks. They’re dark grey, the color of her dress, and they’re also something Gris has never seen. She’s never seen rocks quite in these shapes, in this color, this texture. She touches one of them and can’t grasp what kind of texture she’s feeling.

Up ahead she sees something twisting between the rocks, just as grey and just as strange. It almost looks... like a tree? But like no tree she knows. She approaches it and can’t help but touch it too; the bark is smooth, and there are no leaves in sight. The tree makes a winding path towards the sky, almost as if someone painted it with a brush.

From then on, the path gains a bit of life. More rocks and trees and birds, and Gris almost smiles. She hasn’t seen much life in the last years.

She spies two rocks that seem to be moving around, and at first she thinks she might have finally gone insane. But no, this must be another weird thing on this land. She steps over carefully, and watches, surprised, as little black legs move the rocks. Either these rocks have gained life—which wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities at this point—or there are creatures living inside them.

Gris steps closer to one of them and it stops, legs vanishing inside it. It looks completely innocuous like this, just another rock. She walks away and watches, fascinated, as the rock starts moving again.

Okay, so they don’t like it when she gets close. They’re weirdly cute, and she wants to see what they look like, but she’s not going to bother them for it.

Onwards, then.

Some time later she comes upon something light grey, bigger than her, half-buried in the sand. It looks like stone, but not the same as the statue. It’s more like a piece of a building. She remembers the memory that’s not her own, and the buildings she saw, and something inside her chest dances at the thought. It’s a sign that she’s on the right path.

With renewed determination, Gris keeps to the path, soon finding more and more pieces of buildings. There’s something she’s pretty sure it’s called an archway, and then half a building with a round ceiling, little arched windows along its walls. The ruins of something old. She has to pass through this one to go forward, going up and then jumping down into the sand below.

She jumps without thinking, forgetting she’s not supposed to survive something like this without a broken limb or three... but she gets to the bottom and simply steps on the ground, as if the height she just jumped had been a single stair step instead of three times her old house.

But of course, it makes sense. If she doesn’t need to eat or sleep, it stands to reason that her body can also withstand other extremes that most people can’t.

It still weirds her out a little, having changed so much, and yet not at all.

She’s pretty sure she hasn’t aged since finding the goddess, even though she hasn’t been able to look in a mirror for the last four years.

Her morose thoughts are cut short by a tug in her chest, pulling her forward with such an eagerness that doesn’t seem to be coming from herself. Up ahead she spies a glow inside a ruin, pulsing, gleaming white but still visible even in the middle of so much monochrome.

It calls to her in a familiar way.

Sorrow catches her off guard, and for a moment Gris thinks her legs might fail her again. She breathes deeply, breath catching. _Not now,_ she thinks. _Not now._ She pushes the memory of a gentle stone hand to the back of her mind.

Not now.

The light calling to her is small, standing at the edge of a platform. She approaches it slowly, hopeful but so, so afraid that it will vanish as soon as she gets closer. But with each step she takes, the light just seems to shine brighter, almost as if it’s saying _here_.

When she’s close enough to touch, the light blinks and drops its big glow, keeping only its small body. It shakes and then dances happily around her once, twice, leaving behind a trail of light. It reminds her of fireflies. The little light stops in front of her face and Gris lifts a hand, wondering if she can touch it. It touches the tips of her fingers for a moment, as if in greeting, and then it settles beside her.

Like it’s waiting for something.

Gris blinks at it, wondering, curious. But she has no voice, and neither does the little light, and she doesn’t know what she would say anyway.

She takes a step, testing, and the light follows her. She takes two steps back. The light follows.

Confident that she won’t lose the little thing, Gris keeps walking, occasionally looking behind her, to make sure it’s still there.

She doesn’t feel so alone now.

She walks for a little while and comes upon what seems to have been a bridge at some point. It seems stable enough to walk onto it, and the thought of something that must be ancient still standing to this day is amazing. Just one more proof that this is a sacred land, and human rules don’t apply here.

Right after the bridge her path is blocked, and there seems to be no way forward from here. There’s a brief moment of nervousness where she wonders if she made the wrong turn somewhere, and she suddenly wishes it were night, so that she could see the Arrow constellation and chart her course accordingly.

Something bumps into her from behind and she flinches, spinning around and looking wildly for whatever touched her. Another bump, this time on her stomach. She looks down to the little light hovering close to her. It bumps into her again, clearly wanting her attention. She looks at it, relieved that nothing’s attacking her, and the little light wanders back the way they came, up onto the bridge.

Gris immediately understands what it wants, and a wave of affection for the little thing washes over her. She almost feels silly about it. She must be really lonely if she’s getting attached to floating lights. But then, doesn’t it make sense to have affection for something that’s helping her? And the light actually seems to have a mind of its own, at least.

She steps onto the bridge and runs along it, getting to the rest of the ruins she had seen in the distance. There’s a tower in her way, incredibly tall, and something on the other side of the base of the tower calls to her.

It’s a different call from the little light. This one feels more personal, closer to what it felt to sing to the statue, to channel the goddess’ power through herself.

This one feels like the one inside her.

And Gris can’t get to it.

She takes a deep breath, and then another. There’s no reason to panic just yet. There must be a way to get to the other side. She forces herself to turn around and find another way to it, and she can’t help but smile as she spots another little light waiting for her. It feels like she hasn’t smiled in forever.

She jumps from the bridge to the huge rock beside it, and gets the light. It joins her just as the first one did, wiggling a little, just as excited. At the edge of the rock there’s an arched platform, a big drop, and another rock with another platform on the other side. The two lights accompanying her dance around her once and fly ahead. For a second Gris is afraid they’re going to leave her, but the only thing they do is spread around the gap between the two rocks and blink.

**blink blink**

Gris watches, not really sure she understands. The lights jump up and down, settling into place and blinking again. There’s one near her, on the edge of the platform, and the other is right in the middle of the gap. The other platform has no light.

Oh!

She needs another one!

She nods, trying to communicate her understanding, and the lights rejoin her. She turns around, searching with her eyes and her feelings for another one and, sure enough, she soon feels a tug and looks up, seeing the glow atop a smaller tower. From there her path seems to be getting to the big tower and... somehow making it to the smaller one?

Her little companions dance in front of her again, confirming her path, and it renews her confidence.

She climbs the tower like it’s nothing, enjoying the wind on her face. Years of being atop a giant statue will make anyone immune to heights. The higher she climbs, the stronger the other pull seems to be, calling her back to whatever it is she felt the first time she approached the tower. Up there, at the highest point, she looks down behind her and sees it.

It’s... not a light, exactly. More like very tiny lights dancing around each other, drawing a circle in the air.

It pulls at her, at the power nestled in her chest, at her most recent memories. It threatens to bring her grief to the surface, but she pushes it back down.

Well... there’s only one thing to do in this situation.

She jumps.

This amount of adrenaline is something she’s never felt before, and it rushes through her veins in glee, even as her stomach swoops up and down at the sight of the ground approaching fast. She lands right beside the circle of light, but contrary to the other lights, this one doesn’t come to her.

It wants her to go to it.

She steps towards it gladly, feeling like she's greeting an old friend after a long time apart. When she touches it, it makes a sound unlike anything she’s heard in her life, and it shifts something inside her.

Suddenly, she’s bombarded with more memories that are not her own, going too fast for her to pay attention to each one of them. Still, she manages to get a glimpse of what they try to show her; a red sandstorm, a forest full of trees, a dark place with pinpoints of light, a castle made of glass.

They don’t really make sense right now, though Gris knows they will probably factor into her new goal.

Assuaged now that she has the circle of light, Gris turns back to the taller tower, climbing it again. This time, however, she’s greeted by a large flying creature on her way up.

It’s weird and beautiful and difficult to describe, having more in common with the creatures she used to imagine when she was little than to any animal she has seen, in books or in real life. A small head, a large white body, and a long, thin tail. It seems to be flying and swimming at the same time, its wings moving up and down like fins, and if Gris was in any less of a hurry she could have watched it move all day long.

She still watches it for a while, until it starts getting smaller in her vision. Then she turns around and wonders how she’s gonna get to the other light. But all she has to do is step closer to the edge, and the lights move before she can doubt her actions, lining up along the gap.

A path of light forms between them, a tiny bridge barely wide enough for her to walk on, and it looks so much like a constellation that it warms her heart and brings her a little bit of comfort. It looks precarious, but she’s confident they won’t let her fall, so she steps onto it and walks.

To her delight, her steps make tiny tinkling sounds, like music notes.

She walks back and forth for a moment, happy to hear a sound that isn't her own breathing or her steps on sand.

Then she walks across the light bridge and jumps to the smaller tower, grabbing the new light.

With the three of them in tow, she walks to the platform from earlier and, sure enough, they line up again for her, this time reaching the other side. There’s no one around to judge if she spends a few more minutes going back and forth on the bridge, and the lights seem content to let her have her fun.

On the other side there’s more desert and more rocks, but Gris feels a little bit better now that she has some company.

That is, until she finds two giant, broken hands on the ground.

She looks at them, blinks, and suddenly finds herself standing in the middle of white sand again, nothing for miles and miles except the broken pieces of a friend. She blinks again and comes back to the present, stomach roiling at the flashback. She walks past the first hand, trying to avoid her eyes, and it works. But the second hand is held out, as if waiting for someone to step onto it, like the goddess had done for her, and sadness grabs her heart and doesn’t want to let go this time.

She steps onto the hand and takes in its broken state, the little cracks and the wide fissures. The pain is so strong, it feels like it's pulling her down down down.

Something wet on her cheeks finally seems to break her stupor. Gris curls in on herself and cries. She wants to sob loudly, to let out her grief, but her throat still doesn’t work. So her tears are silent, and her pain is silent, and the world is silent around her.

When she calms down, wiping her face with her sleeves, she feels empty. The numbness is welcome; she’d rather not feel anything.

But then she opens her eyes and gets a surprise.

There are shades of red around her, in the sky and the ground and the rocks, in the stone beneath her feet.

Somehow, while she cried her eyes out, a color came back.

The sorrow and elation inside her make for a strange mix of feelings, but Gris still counts this as a victory. Bringing back a color means her plan is working; gather up all the remnants she can find and put the statue back together, so that her goddess can have a vessel to come back into.

This will work.

It _will_.

She steps off the hand and briefly caressess it, unsure of how she’s feeling at the moment.

But she must push forward, so forward she goes, her little pathlights alongside her.

Farther from the hands, Gris finds the longest flight of stairs she’s ever seen. She’s been finding many things that challenge anything she’s seen in her life so far. It’s a good thing she doesn’t exactly get tired anymore.

She only had to recharge when she was singing.

But it seems like there will be no singing for a good while.

At the end of the stairs, bypassing some tall pillars, Gris sees what seems to be the inside of a big building. It’s hard to say what it is exactly, since she can’t get a good look from afar, but each step closer to it pulls her more and more, the same feeling the lights evoke. The first thing inside the building is a drawing on the wall. It’s the top of a tower and two circles of light; one of the circles is lit up in white, while the other is grey.

So she left one circle behind, then?

She will need to go back and get it later. For now, something calls. In the middle of the building there’s a giant platform that looks like a pot for a plant, and in it the trunk of a tree, no leaves again, but the bark is red and thin. It still looks like someone painted it.

It seems to be a place of honor inside the building, framed by columns on each side, vases and bells and vegetation decorating it. The place looks just as dead as the other ruins she’s been too, even with the red in it.

She steps onto the platform.

The pathlights following her until now jump up and away from her, and Gris watches through the hole in the ceiling as they fly up to the sky, taking position, the same way they did back at the towers.

They blink and form a path high up above, and this time they stay there.

It looks like part of a constellation.

Sadness washes over her when she realizes those pathlights won’t be following her around anymore. Then she shakes her head and moves through the place, passing some stairs on her way out. She doesn’t allow herself to look back at the sky, or at the place she’s leaving. She has a feeling she will be back here later, with more lights.

She sees another drawing with more circle lights near one of the exits, taking note of how many she needs to grab this time. It occurs to her, obviously, that everything seems to be happening in favor of her plan, as if someone read her mind. Or maybe she’s just seeing what she wants to see, because the other option is to give up, and that is unacceptable.

She jumps down another set of stairs and finds a long slope waiting for her. She can’t see the bottom of it. She hesitates for a moment, steps unsure, but so far nothing has been able to hurt her. So she jumps down.

The adrenaline from before is nothing compared to what she’s feeling now, as the slope carries her downward, the long way covered with sand so red that it looks like blood. She recognizes the place from one of her flashes of borrowed memories, and it calms something in her heart to have proof that she’s going the right way.

At the end of the slope, she passes more ruins before free falling down onto a wide, red bridge. The bridge is dark, like the sunlight can’t quite reach it, even though the sun is big and bright in the sky. Further down the path, she climbs a tower and has to fall down again. It occurs to her that this journey would be near impossible for someone not bound to any god.

Below a rocky archway that looks like it was carved by hand instead of weather, she finds another circle of light. This one is strong too, but it doesn’t call to her the same way the other did. The sensation is like she’s talking to someone she doesn't know.

More rocks and dead trees, and a huge mountain chain far off into the distance, like someone has painted triangles on the landscape.

Up ahead she finds what seem to be wind vanes and metal poles, distributed across the land, apparently with no rhyme or reason. She suddenly realizes that there’s no wind here; there hasn’t been any since she fell down. Just another proof that life has stagnated...

...and just as she thinks this, the wind picks up.

It blows red sand across her eyes and she immediately closes them. There’s a faint hope that this won’t be too bad, until it picks up so much that it takes her off her feet and throws her back. Gris plops back to the ground on her knees, burying a hand on the ground and trying to hold on, while the other hand shields her eyes.

She can’t see much, but sees enough to realize that this isn’t just some wind. It’s a sandstorm.

It passes after what must be seconds, though it felt much longer while she hoped not to be thrown all the way back.

The sandstorm might prove to be a challenge, so she hurries forward. When the wind picks up again some seconds later, Gris finds a ruin and rushes for it, hoping to find protection. She steps inside just as the sandstorm hits her. The noise it makes raises the hairs on the back of her neck; the wind howls as it passes through the openings.

It stops again, and she goes, fast, eyeing the ruins a short distance away and hoping to get there in time.

She notices the little rock creatures here don’t seem bothered by the wind at all.

After a while Gris notices the pattern of the wind, and starts counting down the seconds between. After memorizing the time it gets a little easier, even though she’s still caught in it a few times.

The path lights are hidden inside the ruins here, as if they too are hiding from the wind.

There’s a slight change of scenery when she steps on a big metal bridge, where another ruin waits for her at the end. She steps inside and falls to the floor, caught off guard by the way the whole building moves. She regains her footing and looks through one of the openings, seeing the edges of giant black legs, spider-like, carrying the whole building through the desert.

It’s an eerie feeling to think she's inside one of the creatures. Still, she’s glad for the help when she notices where it’s taking her. She wouldn’t have enjoyed having to find a way up the stone bridge on her own. She grabs the circle of light here and steps out of the building, wishing there was a way to thank the creature for the help, even if it might have moved without even knowing she was there.

Further ahead, she finds another circle, but this one seems, for the first time, out of her reach.

Trying to get it from the ground is impossible. There’s nothing to climb and she can’t jump that high. The ceiling above it looks cracked, though, loose stones just waiting for the right force to go tumbling down and giving her an opening. She debates what to do, if she should go back or move forward. She decides that moving forward is the best, since there’s nothing much behind her.

Taking refuge from the weather brings Gris to a little temple in the middle of the desert, almost innocuous looking, something that might have been passed over if she wasn’t paying attention.

When she steps inside, her pathlights fly over to the two little notches on the stone, where they fit perfectly. They blink at her, as if calling, and Gris goes to stand in the middle of the platform.  
Some force that she can’t see snatches her up, bringing her closer to the lights. Her heart speeds up. This is new.

Lights shoot up from the bowl above her, as if connecting to the sky. Suddenly she’s falling back down, fast, wincing as her fall makes a loud noise. She looks at herself and realizes her dress is now a cube.

She blinks at it, flabbergasted.

Moving takes a little bit of effort, each step slow and measured, and sounding like her own legs are made of rock.

Gris tries to concentrate on the feeling of being light, of running unimpeded, and feels a weight lift from her. She opens her eyes and her dress is back to normal. Then she thinks of heavy things, of rocks falling down and breaking everything on their path. And sure enough, her dress is a cube again.

She laughs, silent, surprised and delighted at the mixture of silliness and cleverness of this little ability. Now she’s capable of keeping herself on her feet when the storm hits her directly in the face. The fact that she can use this to get more lights and get closer to her goals is marvelous, but Gris would be lying if she didn’t take some childish glee in becoming a huge rock just for the sake of it.

She imagines that her little sister might have giggled at it too.

Something nags at the back of her mind, and she finds her feet taking her back to the circle of light. She looks at the ceiling, one hard knock away from shattering, and smiles. It takes her a few tries to get it right. Changing at will like this takes some concentration, but soon she has another circle within her.

The wind seems to pick up even more after that, lasting longer than before, as if angry with her for having a way to fight back now.

But it can’t keep her anymore. She takes her heavy, rocky steps forward, until she finds refuge inside a temple.

There are statues here; it’s her goddess. They’re not as big, but these ones are whole, uncracked, unmarred by time, and completely red. The goddess is depicted suffering in each of them, becoming the pillars of the temple, as if sustaining the weight of it is too much.

As if sustaining the weight of the world is too much.

Her feelings resurface, wanting to drown her, but Gris clenches her teeth in anger and pushes it all back down. Now’s not the time to grieve. She will deal with her pain later.

The temple is incredibly big; she passes a section of cracked floor, wondering if she can break through, and finds herself outside again, where a circle of light waits for her up on a platform. The wind tries to knock her off many times, but her new ability comes in handy now, and soon she has the circle with her.

Back inside, the cracked floor seems ominous. It’s in the middle of the temple, surrounded by bells of all sizes, with the biggest one right above it. She touches one of the little bells, enjoying the subtle, almost shy sound it makes. Part of her wants to sit down and play with the bells for a while, or maybe watch the rock creatures come and go, but Gris knows that if she stops, she might not get up again.

She breaks down the floor and feels her stomach swoop in the fall. She winces as she passes through smaller platforms on the way, breaking each one without ceremony. It feels wrong, somehow, to destroy these ancient things, but this ability was given to her for a reason.

She stops at another stone floor, with another giant bell, this one ringing loud and clear after she slams down.

This part of the temple looks almost unfinished, with the fading red and the cracked bell.

Another breakable floor, and another journey down, this time into the darkness. When she lands, she does so on some random vases that immediately break. But this isn’t what captures her attention.

The truly captivating thing here is the floor.

It’s completely white, made of something she can’t pinpoint, and it reflects her back to herself like a mirror, except not quite. Her reflection is entirely black, a silhouette, and she’s the only thing being reflected. Well, her and the dark things flying around her reflection.

It takes Gris a moment to realize they’re butterflies. Black butterflies.

They’re bigger than any she has ever seen, the size of her head, wings flapping calmly, as if waiting.

She takes a look around her, straining to see in the dark. There are some white particles floating away from the floor, like little crystals, but they don’t reflect any light. She walks around for a moment, until she sees another statue. And then another. And another, and another. Suddenly they’re all she can see; her goddess with her hands on her face, suffering, always suffering, why is she always suffering?

Didn’t she do enough? She was the only one strong enough to stay behind after all the other gods faded away, keeping the world turning as best as she could.

She was alone for so long, until Gris came.

And hasn’t Gris done enough, too? She’s not even a goddess, she shouldn’t even be here, and yet here she is, trying to put back together something that seems intent on breaking over and over.

This is so unfair.

Everything has been so unfair.

And Gris is so alone.

In a fit of anger, she breaks the vases around her, pushing some of them over, slamming into them with her cube dress, feeling the tears run down her cheeks. But all she feels is the fury running through her veins. Fury at the gods and her goddess and her herself. Fury at her family for letting her leave. Fury at the world at large.

Gris has never wanted to scream as much as she wants to right now. She claws at her own throat, nails digging into her skin, but no matter how much anger she has and how much she mentally begs, her voice doesn’t come.

She falls on her knees and slams a fist on the ground, and watches as the butterflies react to it. Curious, distracted from her pain, she slams another fist down. Butterflies spring from the reflection’s floor, as if coming from the place she hit. She takes a look at the other side and realizes that the number of butterflies is way higher than when she got here.

It’s almost hypnotizing, watching the black butterflies fly around her silhouette’s head. They’re beautiful in their movement, even though something inside her recoils every time she looks at them.

Gris walks around and breaks a few more vases, keeping an eye on the reflected side, more and more butterflies filling up the space.

She looks up at one of the statues, a small one that seems very cracked and fragile, and wonders.

She climbs it, stopping right above the head. Then she jumps and transforms, slamming down with the force of her anger and desperation and the jumble of things she can’t describe. The statue breaks and releases a flurry of butterflies inside the reflection.

It feels good. It feels so good that Gris almost feels bad about it.

But she breaks a few more statues anyway, collecting so many butterflies that the reflected side is almost completely black now. She swears she can almost hear the flapping of giant wings if she concentrates.

And then, the butterflies break through the floor in a flurry of movement, so fast and frantic, almost aggressive, slapping against her. They swoop down on her and block her view, encasing her inside their blackness. For a sickening moment, Gris feels like all the air is taken from her lungs, and wonders _what have I done?_ before they sweep her up.

They take her back the way she came and up up up, past the temple and the figures of her goddess in her eternal suffering.

They drop her none too gently onto a metal platform, and fly away.

Gris takes a minute to regain her composure. She feels some guilt over her little breakdown, but now’s not the time to dwell on that. She just needs to keep going for now.

She finds strange clock-like structures on her path, made of metal and light and seemingly out of place in the middle of desert. The windmills remind her of home, and the memory it’s a strange comfort. Her favorite parts in all of this are the floating rocks, and the fans that open whenever she gets near, allowing her passage.

All throughout the desert she keeps seeing the black butterflies, again with the sound of bird wings, as if they were much bigger than they appear.

She feels immensely guilty when she mistimes her rock slam and breaks one of the rock creatures’ shells, but she can’t help her curiosity when she sees something black and leggy, encased in dark metal, go crawling away from the broken rock. It’s probably by sheer luck that they help her get the pathlight, and Gris wishes she could apologize and thank them properly.

The giant windmill is a marvel, and Gris takes a second to breath and take it in, amazed at the sheer size of all that she’s found so far, constructions clearly made by expert hands. The clock windmill takes her up to a metal bridge, more fans opening the way for her...

...At the end of it she finds parts of another statue, this one the same size as her goddess, broken stone pillars between her arms.

The light inside her pulses once, twice, and Gris watches, fascinated, as the color green slowly comes back. Vines, big vines thicker than her body, spring up from seemingly everywhere, as the stone arms holding her up gain a tint of green. Gris, in a moment of honesty, admits to herself that she doesn’t want to leave. If she could, she would just lay in these hands for hours.

A breath, a step forward, and she falls onto the vines, sliding down and off a slope, and landing on a familiar bridge.

She’s back at the temple.

She takes a good look at it now; it’s big, like everything else, and it’s different from before. Not that she paid much attention to it, but she remembers not seeing any green amidst the white and red. The vases have leaves and small trees now, and there are vines coming from the ceiling and wrapping around corners. The big tree in the middle looks alive, a huge canopy reaching to the floor above.

She watches another batch of pathlights fix themselves in the sky, having to step on the tree itself to be able to see.

To the left, where she can reach now, there’s another drawing and more circles. Another puzzle piece for her plan.

As she walks along the bridge, she can see some black butterflies flying right below it. She’s halfway through when she hears a loud noise, like stone breaking—don’t think about, don’t think about it. Gris looks behind, dread pooling in her stomach, as the broken stone flies around and the butterflies fly away.

They’ve broken the bridge. Her mind flashes back to when she fed those butterflies, breaking the things in her way and probably giving them exactly what they wanted. She can’t say what they are, but they’re certainly nothing like the insects she knew from back home.

She turns around and keeps going, mind still reeling. Gris has a feeling those butterflies will come back to bother her.

The bridge ends on a broken edge, and down below Gris can see a forest.

So much green. Each color that comes back is a balm on the eyes, after going so long with such a limited palette.

Down on the forest floor she encounters tiny little round creatures. They look like they’re made of soot, with little leaves coming out of them. They make the cutest noises, but just like the rock ones, they hide whenever Gris gets close. Some other creatures look like giant mushrooms, running and hiding when they see her approaching.

She tries not to take it personally. They’ve probably never seen a person before.

Gris finds a new challenge in the forest; the trees disappear in a set interval. Their canopy vanishes into thin air, leaving only the sinuous trunks behind for a few second, before suddenly appearing again, making a full tree for a moment, and then repeating the cycle.

It’s not really difficult, though she does take care not to step out of time.

After a few minutes of walking around, following the pull that she’s become familiar with, she comes across a stone creature. They seem to be asleep, sitting in a rock a few meters away from her. She steps closer to get a better look; they look as if someone sculpted them, instead of the natural rocks she saw before.

Gris steps on some dry leaves, and they crack loudly in the quiet forest.

The little stone creature, shaped like a cube, wakes up with a jolt. Their black eyes zero in on her, and they stare at each other for a second, before the cube creature runs away.

Gris almost wants to run after them, but she refrains.

They all seem wary of her, and there’s no use in scaring them even more.

But as she walks forward, she notices the little creature from the corner of her eyes, watching her from afar, following her through the trees. She stops twice to try and get their attention, but they always hide. One of those times, Gris even goes looking for them behind the tree where she saw them last, but when she circles around, they’re not there.

Another thing she discovers in the forest is the canopies that turn into ramps for her. They mostly seem to work on a set time too, just like the previous challenges.

Still, they’re not impossible to beat, not with her inhuman constitution, and sooner than she expects she has a circle of light with her.

After the circle, she comes across another cracked floor, and when she breaks it, she falls atop a tree. There’s a small _thunk_ right after, as if something’s fallen down. Just as she’s ready to jump down the tree, she sees the cube creature grab an apple from the ground and eat it. The apple is huge; Gris’ pretty certain it’s bigger than her head, yet the little cube finishes it in seconds.

It seems pretty happy while doing so, even though it still hides from her when she gets closer.

Through her path she finds more apples, and makes sure to make them fall onto the ground, watching from above as the creature eats them. After a couple more apples, Gris comes down and realizes the cube didn’t hide this time. They look at her for a moment, as if measuring her up, and then they circle around her, just like the pathlights like to do, trying to convey their happiness to her.

She can’t talk, but she can smile, and she pets their head as they look up at her.

They don’t seem like they’ve ever been petted before, because they wave their arms at her and make this cute little sound, like they’re laughing, or maybe telling her something.

Oh no. They’re so cute.

Gris doesn't want to get attached, but this little one it’s making it very hard. It’s bad enough that gets sad when she needs to let her pathlights go. What is she gonna do when she needs to let the cube creature go too?

They make another sound and run the way they came, stopping by the trunk of a seemingly dead tree. Gris watches as they open a type of door on the trunk, wave at her, and fall into it.

Well.

She follows them down a hole inside the mound of dirt they were stepping on, and out the left side of it.

The hidden paths in the forest don’t really surprise her, neither does the fact that her cube friend seems to know of them. What does surprise her is their ability to break things down just like her. She wouldn’t have assumed they were so strong. Then again, no one would assume she’s strong either, because no one would assume she harbors godly powers inside her.

Gris and her friend come to a stop on a hill, another dead tree nearby. They wave at her and jump down the hole. Gris tries to follow, but the hole is too small for her to pass through. She tries to look inside, but it’s too dark.

For a moment she just stands there, frowning at the trunk and its red, smooth bark.

They wouldn’t just leave her, would they?

Gris bites her lips, trying to hold her tears. They barely knew each other. They probably spent less than an hour together. There’s no reason to feel this sad. It’s not like they owe her their time or companionship at all.

Still, she waits there. She’s not sure how long, but she does.

What must be hours later, Gris finally gives up. Despondent, she sidesteps the trunk and goes back to her walking. If she looks back once or twice, no one needs to know.

Up ahead there’s a temple, a little similar to the one with the tree, but in the middle of this one there’s another square, waiting for pathlights. Gris sees some butterflies near the square and her heart rate picks up, before she realizes that these ones are red. They probably have nothing to do with the black ones, but she’s still cautious as she moves closer.

Two notches into the stone. Two lights that she needs to find, and she will probably have another ability soon.

She goes right first, back to the forest, and finds a giant tree trunk. There are a few little stone creatures on its branches, similar to her friend, but these ones are mostly round. She looks at the hole inside the trunk; this one she can definitely fit through.

She lands inside the hill, and on her path inwards she finds more and more of the little creatures. Some of them wave at her, like they know her. Or like they know of her. She waves back, happy to have even this much interaction with other living beings, and somehow feeling silly about being happy.

Her happiness can wait.

Deep inside what seems to be the creatures’ house, Gris finally finds her friend again. And they have a pathlight for her. It touches her, to be handed such an important thing like this. Did they jump down because they knew she needed it? Were they waiting here for her? Were they going to wait, not being sure if she would ever come?

A tear slips out before she can stop it. Gratitude swells in her chest, touched by their help and also incredibly sad that they need to part. She hadn’t realized how much she missed having actual friends. The little cube seems distraught at her tears, trying to hug her legs, maybe to sooth her. She kneels down and hugs them. Their little arms are strong as they hug her back.

It’s hard to leave. She waves and they wave back, they all do. Stepping outside is one of the hardest things she’s done in a long while, and she’s done plenty of hard things.

But she has a goal, and she needs to go on.

The other pathlight is by the left of the temple, hidden by trees that follow her movements.

Back on the temple, Gris walks to the platform and waits for the pathlights to take their place. Just as before, an invisible force lifts her up, and when she falls back down, her feet don’t touch the floor. Instead, she floats by the butterflies and they shoot her up to the next floor. Gris gets there confused, not understanding exactly what happened.

Until she tries to jump.

Oh. Oh! She can jump even higher now! And she looks behind herself while in the air, she sees the top layer of her dress take the form of wings.

Her glee at the rock dress didn’t prepare her to the joy of having wings. Granted, she can’t actually fly, but knowing that she’s a little like a bird now brings a silly joy.

(“What’s a robin?” Gris asked, taking advantage of a break to ask questions.

 _“A type of bird. Their singing is really beautiful. Like yours.”_ The goddess answered.)

If only her goddess could see her now.

With her new ability, Gris flies up the trees, to the next floor of the temple. She quickly understands that the red butterflies can boost her to go faster and higher than she can on her own. It's a nice change, going from fearing butterflies to looking forward to them.

In one corner she finds a vase that moves from side to side, shaking slightly, like something or someone is stuck inside. The vase is too heavy for her to topple it, and the lid is strangely black, like a void. She can’t see inside, and whatever it is can’t come out that way. So Gris climbs on top of it and hopes she’s not going to crush whatever’s inside.

She doesn’t. When the vase breaks and her feet touch the floor, red butterflies fly out from under her dress, hovering there over her head. Waiting.

Using them helps her find another circle of light.

Gris just keeps going up and up, higher and higher. From the first floor she couldn’t have imagined that there was so much more to see. She remembers being able to see the sky over the temple. But now, inside it, it’s larger and taller, as if by magic. Well, magic or divine powers, which are basically the same, anyway.

After she gets to the top, the butterflies keep sending her up, to another temple floating in the air, this one with more statues. She doesn’t look too closely at these, unable to face her goddess when she’s feeling so raw.

Atop this floating temple, Gris find a large rooftop full of black butterflies.

She barely has time to think that she shouldn’t be here before the butterflies take flight and start circling, amassing, fusing into each other. They take the form of something black, like ink, like shadows. The shadowy mass then takes the form of a bird, and it lands on the roof with a resounding, its steps so heavy that they shake the whole structure.

It stares at her with its white eyes, glowing amidst the darkness of its body. It cocks its head in snappy motion, so bird-like, even though this isn’t a bird at all.

Then it screams.

The scream is so powerful that it sends Gris flying backwards.

She desperately looks around for a way out and sees more red butterflies. They keep sending her up, and Gris has no choice but to follow, trusting the gods to know the way better than her. The bird doesn’t actually try to attack her, but it keeps screaming every time it sees her, upsetting her balance.

It’s like it doesn’t want her to keep flying. Maybe it doesn’t want her to keep going up.

She recalls the dark and white room she fell into, with the reflecting floor. Recalls her anger and her sorrow, a toxic mixture that made her lose control of her emotions, that made her trash around and break things that she shouldn’t break.

Gris recalls the way the butterflies only helped her when she gave them what they wanted.

Her grief.

One of the elders back in her village used to say that bad emotions could pile up, even outside the body. That they could sometimes take form and haunt places and people, bringing misery and ruining bright things. Gris’ hairs stand on end all over her body as she makes the connection.

This bird, this thing, is misery incarnate.

It’s the countless emotions and feelings of those left behind, maybe even of the gods themselves. This darkness has had centuries and centuries to fester, maybe even milenia, to fester in silence here. It probably didn’t attack the other creatures Gris has seen because, in the grand scheme of things, they’re insignificant. Even Gris herself would have gotten away undetected, under normal circumstances.

But Gris carries power now. Divine power.

And this thing... this thing is hungry. It’s hungry and it knows what Gris wants to do, has been following her around probably since the moment she plopped unceremoniously onto white sand.

But if it wants Gris, it’s going to have to catch her.

It follows her on her journey up, flying alongside her in a parody of companionship, but the bells hanging from the next temple ring in the wind they make, and the shadow bird dissolves into nothing as the notes resonate in the air. Gris notes this down in her mind.

She proves her own theory minutes later, when the bird tries to impede her from climbing, but it screams so loud that it makes the bell ring, and the sound hurts it. It tries to keep flying, but the shadows can’t hold its form, dissolving and reforming and dissolving again. Right before it disappears, Gris thinks she sees a face there, in the middle of the darkness, but she can’t say if she recognizes it.

After the bird leaves, she climbs a long flight of stairs, finding another statue of her goddess at the end of it.

This one is missing half the head, but it looks so much like her.

So, so much.

It hurts. Gris flies onto the hands and stares up at the half face. She has no idea how long she’s been running and jumping and gathering things. Hours? Days? Months? Time has lost all meaning for her, the goal she set the only thing pushing her forward.

It hurts so much.

_Do not fall into despair._

She’s crying before even noticing the burn behind her eyes. She kneels on the stone but refuses to take her eyes off the statue, even as her vision blurries. She can’t sing, but she mentally hums her favorite song, watching as the color blue slowly comes back into the world, like drops of paint.

It gives the statue the blue hue Gris is so familiar with, another pang inside her chest making her choke on nothing. She gives herself a minute, but no more than a minute. Soon she’s up again, drying her eyes and realizing how futile that action is, because it’s raining.

Gris hasn’t seen rain in years. It’s beautiful and melancholic, just the way she remembers it. It fits her mood very well.

The statue is a pathway back to the forest. Gris can see the places where it’s changed, where little lakes have formed due to the rain. She also sees the outlines of trees, invisible if not for the water, and now she knows how she’s going back to the main temple. When she gets to the bridge that leads back to it, she sees the huge lake that has formed where before there was nothing.

The butterflies help her with a shortcut, and soon she’s back at the temple with the constellation, admiring the way the blue complements everything else, how the water finds it home in places she didn’t think would have water at all. She leaves the pathlights there and gets ready to collect some more.

The only way left to go is down, where the water allows her to access a part of the temple she couldn’t before. She recognizes the drawing on the wall; it’s a turtle, along with more circles of lights.

This new path leads her underground. The walls are dark and wet, and the cold would have made Gris shiver, if temperature could bother her. She finds a lot of ruins on her way down, and bodies of water that float, creating pockets of air under it and allowing her to walk in them. It’s surreal, like every other experience she’s had so far.

The most interesting thing is how she needs to use all the abilities she’s gained to pass through. Everything looks more and more like a test, and Gris wonders if the gods were waiting for someone to step here, in this land. If they were waiting for someone brave enough—crazy enough—to try and bring one of them back.

Some part of her is proud of what she’s accomplished, knows that other people might have given up halfway through, that some people wouldn’t even have entertained the notion at all.

Another part of her wants to go home.

But that part has less and less strength as time goes by.

She finds another one of the altars that grant her powers, so she scouts the crystal caves in search of the pathlights, curious and impatient. The caves’ ability to turn her image into crystal is incredible, and Gris wonders if that’s what she’s going to get.

It’s not. She gets something much better.

Swimming like a stingray is not something Gris ever thought to want, but now that she has it, she can’t imagine losing it. Being able to swim without ever coming up for air leaves her giddy with the possibilities. She wants to explore every cranny and nook in the underwater caves, wants to see every fish and plant.

But there’s no time for that.

She sees the shell of a turtle floating in the water, and sets about collecting the lights. She finds some of the trickiest challenges here, and some of the prettiest places she’s seen so far. There are butterfly-fishes and water that doesn’t move in all directions, and again, so many ruins, like someone made buildings above the ground and they slowly sank into the earth.

The pathlights awaken the turtle, seeming to breathe life into it. Gris can't imagine how long it might have been there, asleep, waiting to be woken up.

It helps her cross the dark water, and then she keeps going down by herself, until the water ends and drops her down.

She lands atop a statue and slides down to the water. She swims around, until she can get to the statue’s hand. It’s something she knows how to do now; she channels the power gathering inside her and pushes it outward, wishing, wishing so hard to fix this.

This time, different from all the others, the statue opens her eyes. Gris can feel it; she’s so close now. So close to her goal. A moon appears behind the statue, so big and bright and blinding. Gris watches as yellow winks into existence, little points of light around her, lighting up the place. The light shines into existence some parts that were missing in the ruins, little rooms made of glass.

She’s seen this before, in the memories the lights showed her.

So close.

She tries to sing again, hoping that this might be enough. But no, her throat is still silent, voice gone.

She heaves a deep sigh, wondering where to go now. But before she can move, she hears the sound of countless wings flapping, getting closer and closer.

When she realizes what it is, it’s too late.

The black butterflies break the statue, and Gris only has time to jump up, to get to the red ones, before the shadows coil around the statue and the ruins, as if trying to choke the life out of them. The darkness manages to close around her, but she flies away.

It follows her into the water, turning into an eel. It’s creepy and weird, with its black, inky body and its white eyes, and Gris dislikes how afraid it makes her feel. It manages to bring to the surface of her heart a deep fear that she didn’t know she was capable of feeling. She keeps swimming, more desperate with each thrust, until she manages to lose the eel in the darkness of the caves.

She grabs another circle of light, trying to find her way out. She’s lost her pathlights, but even if they were here, they wouldn’t be able to illuminate the way.

In a burst of rage, the eel finds her again, almost closing its mouth around her. She swims up, heart racing. Before, the darkness had only seemed to want to scare her, to stop her. Now it seems determined to grab her, maybe even kill her. Maybe it wants her to be part of it, to share in its misery and spread it around.

It certainly wants her to stop what she’s doing, which is just one more reason to keep going.

There’s a moment, just a moment, where Gris thinks this might be it. The eel closes in on her, faster than her, and opens its mouth so wide, it would look unnatural in an actual animal. It gets closer than it’s been during this chase, and just when Gris thinks she will be lunch, the turtle shows up with its warm light, chasing the darkness away.

Gris could have cried if she was in a dry place.

The turtle takes her to a safe place, and Gris dances around it once, wishing to show her appreciation in some way.

The path back to the surface is almost the same, except for the light-trees and the new glass buildings she sees on the way. There are also trees made of water, allowing her to swim inside them, and at last she takes a waterfall that takes her back up, though the lower floor of the temple right outside the vase housing the main tree.

The pathlights take their place in the sky, which is dark now, night finally here. It looks more and more like an actual path, and Gris has a feeling she might have to walk that one too.

That’s fine. Walking paths is something she does very well.

Now that she can step on the roof of the temple, she can get to the place to the left of it, where stairs made of glass await her.

This is, unquestionably, the most beautiful place Gris has ever seen. Nothing on her journey has been quite like this, with the blue glass shining and reflecting the yellow light from the moon and the lamps.

Here, everything she’s learned is put to the test, all her control of the abilities she’s been given, all the countless hours she’s spent using them to get exactly where she is.

Some of the buildings only show in certain lights, making it difficult to map the place in her head. She hesitates when she needs to break a floor, though. It’s almost sacrilegious to do it, when the place is so beautiful and well kept, even after milenia of standing here, empty, at the end of the world.

Also, the place is as complicated as it’s beautiful, requiring here to backtrack constantly. It even challenges her sense of equilibrium as it makes her walk and fly upside down, going back and forth.

With two pathlights in tow, she tracks back to the altar, shaking a little in pure excitement.

Nothing could have prepared her for what she gets.

Or rather, what she gets _back_.

After being lifted and put back down, Gris feels her throat opening, like some invisible hand has finally let her go.

For a moment she can’t quite believe what’s happening, so afraid to try and find out she’s wrong.

But then an urge like she hasn’t felt in years bubbles up inside her chest. This urge has nothing to do with the gods or the powers she’s accumulated. No, this urge is solely and utterly hers. The urge to do something she loves just for the sake of doing it.

She opens her mouth, takes a deep breath, and _sings_.

The notes are clumsy at first, but Gris doesn’t care. There’s a grin on her face, stretching her cheeks, and she knows she’s crying, but she’s been waiting for this exact moment, and it’s all been worth it.

Her music brings life to the things around her, flowers and leaves and bubbles and animals, all taking on hues of pink and blooming, life waking up from a long sleep. She knows she has more backtracking to do, more life to bring back, knows her song will help open the way forward. But she takes a couple of minutes to just sit and sing at the base of the altar, allowing herself to enjoy one of her favorite things in the world.

Atop the altar, after she gathers all that she needs, Gris finds a small little sapling, colorless, looking sad and alone in its vase.

She sings to it, and it grows, and it keeps growing, until she has a giant tree in front of her, pink leaves glowing in the moonlight. She climbs it, getting to the top and crossing the light walkway. It brings her to a small glass platform.

She sings, feeling something click into place, a puzzle piece falling exactly where it needs to fall, guided by her own hand.

Her song lights up the sky in pink hues, and suddenly her whole world is turning upside down. Gris rotates in the air, and the world along with her, and when it rights itself again, she falls down on the roof of the temple.

The last pathlights join the rest.

This is it. All she wanted, right here. The relief is potent, threatening to bring her to her knees.

There’s only one thing left to do before walking the light bridge.

She falls down to the left, where the stone bridge was broken what feels like ages ago, and swims down until she finds the last circle of light. The light inside her chest vibrates as it’s finally whole again, and it pulls at her, wanting her to go somewhere.

She lets it guide her, and it shows her the secret room inside the temple. It has a sun etched into the wall, sleeping flowers adorning it. Oh, it makes sense now. They weren’t really circles; they were suns. Tiny little suns to light her way.

She sings, awakening the flowers and activating whatever power resides in the etchings.

(The memories are broken, not entirely there.

But Gris can see her goddess, when she was still alive and not just the remnants of a power inside a statue. She’s beautiful, with long, flowing blue hair and light brown skin. In the memory, she’s smiling at someone, talking about something as they watch the flowers sway in the wind. Someone in the distance calls, and the memory fades.

Other memories take its place, some of the other gods appearing too, looking surprisingly human.

The construction of the temple, being put together rock by rock, by calloused hands, everyone helping in the way they could.

The underground buildings, actually put there on purpose.

The failsafes put into place, the plan to keep some of their powers in hidden corners.

The fear, when the darkness began to take shape, began to suck the land dry. First of water, then of color, then of life.

The grief, when one by one the gods died.

The mourning and the loneliness, when the goddess found herself alone, fading, trying to keep the world alive by her will and stubbornness.

Her faith broken, when her body, that should have been forever young and unbreakable, finally gave out. All she could do was hide away inside one of her statues, and wait. Wait for something that might never come, hoping the world would survive long enough.)

Gris looks at the mural for a while, processing what she’s just learned. It lines up with the few scraps of knowledge she gathered on her journey, and the few other memories she acquired by binding herself to the goddess.

The gods knew they would be gone someday. That’s why she always felt like she was being led somewhere, like all the pieces were lined up in just the right way for her to move forward.

Her sense of purpose has never been stronger.

Gris goes back up to the roof, and awakens the last flowers, freeing the sleeping butterflies inside. She flies up to the tower where the path of light begins, ready to walk it to wherever it might take her. This is the last step.

But, of course, the darkness chooses this moment to show itself again, determined to stop her.

Gris can feel it coming this time, like something heavy in the air. It appears as the eel first. And then it dares, it _dares_ to scream at her with the face of her goddess, as a mockery. Gris watches, angry, heart thumping fast against her ribcage, as one face morphs into another, and she sees herself staring back.

The white eyes glow, but no warmth comes from them. They’re not real lights; they’re just poor imitations, trying so hard to simulate something the shadows can never possess, only destroy. It opens its mouth farther than it should go, and starts sucking all the colors and all the life into it, like the hungry monster it is.

Gris’s hard work, being undone right in front of her. The problem is that no matter how much power Gris has been able to gather, she’s still defenseless when it comes to this thing. She still fights as best as she can, pulls on her limited powers, prays, even sings.

But nothing works, and suddenly she’s back in the void of white that she hates so much.

Gris falls, falls, falls, right into the monster’s mouth.

When she wakes, she’s submerged.

Dark water, no matter where she looks. So dark she can barely see her hand in front of her face, and there’s no pathlight to illuminate the way for her. Her swimming ability doesn’t work either. The darkness is powerful, surrounding her from all sides, like a hunter encroaching on its prey.

But Gris still has a goal.

She hasn’t gotten to the end of her path just yet.

_Do not fall into despair._

She starts swimming up, slowly, painfully slow. The water clears a little, as she nears the surface, and she notices pieces of stone floating around her. It’s too dark to see clearly yet, but she has a feeling she knows exactly what they are. Who they are.

The last piece of the puzzle she’s been putting together is waiting for her at the surface.

Floating there above water, forgotten, forsaken, is a grave.

Her goddess’ grave, and the heartbreaking truth.

No, the gods hadn't abandoned them. The gods didn't even know they existed, because they had been long gone by the time her home even became something worth calling a village. The old goddess of something Gris could never tell had been the only one left, hanging by a thin whisper of will, a thread that Gris helped keep together as long as she could.

She had always known the thread would snap one day. She just thought she had been more prepared to deal with the emotional fallout of it all.

She sings to her goddess, decorating her grave with pink flowers and little bubbles. Part of her wants to stay right here, and maybe a little piece of her actually does. Gris understands now, the power of wanting, of having such a strong will that things will move for you.

She walks away.

She steps onto the pieces of the statue, _her_ statue, using them to hop to the top, where a hand waits for her. Stepping onto it is comforting in a way few things have been so far, overwhelming in its familiarity, making her spill more tears.

She can feel the darkness approaching again, trying to suck the rest of her energy, but this time she won’t let it.

She starts her favorite song, the one with the high notes where her goddess used to join her.

The darkness finds them again, this time taking the form of an oily shadow, coming up from the river. It climbs up the statue’s feet, up and up until it gets to her hand, and to Gris. She forces herself not to react, old habit taking over, song never stopping even as she finds herself in turmoil.

The statue glues itself back together agonizingly slow, some dark force trying to keep its pieces separate.

But Gris knows her music, and her goddess, and the bond they share. She knows what’s in her heart, knows what pieces she’s been putting back together over the course of the longest days of her life. She knows everything she did was for this exact moment.

And just as the darkness thinks it won, just as it engulfs her fully, trying to drown her in its sorrow and its rage, Gris gets to the heart of her song.

And a voice she has longed to hear joins hers.

The shadows recede as if burned away by the light, desperate to hide from the radiance in front of it. The light inside Gris comes to life, like a bonfire that’s been waiting to be lit. She feels lighter than ever before, and for a moment she sees through her goddess’ eyes as the world she's been so desperately trying to save regains its colors one by one.

Places she’s seen and places she’s never been to, all the way form the farthest north to the farthest south, gaining their life back little by little. Gris knows it will take time for the world to heal, for the people to feel safe again, to know that someone’s watching over them and to trust that that someone will see them through.

But Gris and her goddess will be there for them.

When the song comes to an end, Gris opens her eyes and finds a pair of stone ones looking back at her.

_“Well done, little robin.”_

“We did it!” Gris cannot contain her grin, happiness pouring out of her. She knows she’s projecting all her feelings through their bond, but the goddess doesn’t seem to mind.

_“No. You did it.”_

“I couldn’t have done it without you, and without everyone else.”

 _“True. But the choice to pursue this path was yours, and yours alone.”_ The goddess brings her closer, giving Gris a rare smile. _“I’m proud of you.”_

Gris told herself she wasn’t going to cry again, but here she is, crying. It’s been so long since someone told her they were proud of her.

 _Father, mother, I did it_ , she thinks to herself, very quietly.

_“Now it’s time for me to go.”_

Gris’ thoughts come to a halt. “What?”

_“I need to go, little robin. My time here is over.”_

“But...” No. No no no. After everything? “So, it didn’t work?” Gris asks, lips wobbling. This can’t be happening.

_“It did. Of course it did. Can’t you feel it inside you?”_

“What are you talking about? Are you going to leave me? Is that it?”

_“We all leave someday. It’s the nature of the world.”_

“So the world is doomed?”

_“No, of course not. How could it be doomed when it has you?”_

“I don’t understand.”

_“I think you do.”_

Gris bites her lips. It sounds far fetched, impossible, foolish. A madwoman’s dream. And yet, she can’t deny all the evidence right in front of her.

“I’m not— this isn’t what I wanted.”

_“I know.”_

“I’m not meant for greatness!”

_“And yet, here you are.”_

“I’m not— it was never my destiny to be a goddess!”

_“Destiny doesn’t exist, little robin. You are here because of your choices. You are here because you deserve to be here.”_

“But you’re still here! Why can’t you stay?”

_“Haven’t you noticed? I’m not the one maintaining our connection.”_

That takes Gris by surprise, although it shouldn’t. She can feel it, the power emanating from her, making her wish come through. She spent so long wanting to see her goddess again, to talk to her, to hear her voice one more time. So here she is. Brought back by Gris herself.

“Oh.”

The goddess chuckles, a rare thing for her. _“Oh, indeed.”_

Gris thinks back to everything she’s learned on her journey here.

“So I’m gonna be alone now. Truly alone, this time.” More tears escape her as she thinks of the eternity that awaits her.

_“No one is ever truly alone. Besides, haven’t you made friends along the way? Don’t forget that you can always count on other people. Don’t forget that I wasn’t always alone, either.”_

Gris thinks of all the gods she saw in her memories, the old ones and new ones, the ones that held on until they couldn’t anymore, just to give the world a little more of a fighting chance.

“So I have to go after other gods. I mean, other beings that might become gods.”

_“You don’t have to do that. Remember, there are no chosen ones. Let them choose it themselves.”_

“Like I did.”

_“Like you did.”_

All the pieces are neatly in place now. It all makes sense, in some convoluted away. There’s just one more thing left to ask.

“This is what happened to you and the others, isn’t it? You chose to come here, to help.”

The goddess’ smile widens. _“Little robin has always been very smart.”_

Gris’s smiles back, even though the tears keep coming from time to time.

“I’m going to miss you. So, so much. Thank you for everything.”

Gris is not even shocked when she sees a single tear run down the goddess’ cheek.

_“I will miss you too. But we will see each other again. Until then, you have your duty, and I know you will do it well.”_

Gris voice breaks. “I’ll make you proud, I promise.”

 _“You already do.”_ The goddess’ voice is failing, as if she’s being dragged away.

Gris knows it's time to let go. She takes a deep breath, and tries for a smile. It comes out wobbly and teary, but it’s there.

“Goodbye.”

_“Goodbye, Gris. And thank you.”_

She kisses the goddess on her cheek, and a moment later the stone hand moves back, away from the goddess’ face, to deposit Gris back onto the platform. Gris has only a second to stare into grey eyes before they close for the last time, and she watches as the statue crumbles in front of her, turning into dust, its duty finally fulfilled.

The wind sweeps the dust away, taking it to settle back into the sands, to be part of the world again, to go back into the cycle of life and death.

Gris has been falling to her knees a lot, but she allows herself this one last time. She rests her head on the floor and cries, as freely as she wishes, sobs tearing out of her. She knows she’s loud, wonders if the birds and the fishes can hear her, but she doesn’t stop.

Days’ worth of grief comes pouring out of her, finally. All the fear and the worry, the exhaustion that goes beyond the physical, the mental and emotional toll of carrying this burden for so long.

And now she knows, with certainty, that she’s never going home.

So she stays there and cries, while the night moves on slowly.

After what feels like hours, Gris wipes her face and gets up. She takes a last look at the world through her human eyes, not wanting to take it for granted. Then she turns her attention to the constellation waiting for her. She doesn’t know its name; maybe it has none. She wonders if she can name it Path.

She walks on her light bridge with steady steps, face swollen but heart calm, knowing she did what she had to do. What she _wanted_ to do. And it all has led to this moment.

It’s a duty, she knows. It won’t always be easy, or happy, or successful.

But Gris will not fall into despair, because there's a whole world waiting for her.

She can’t see anything beyond the end of the path, except for fluffy white clouds and a beam of light.

The result of her choices, waiting for her.

She passes the threshold.

Deep in the forest, a group of little creatures hurries back and forth, carrying around big rocks and small rocks and leaves and flowers. The little shrine is almost ready.

There’s only one small detail missing.

After the last flower is put into place, one of the creatures, shaped like a cube, steps up to the altar. They carry an apple in their little arms.

They place the apple on the altar, beside the cluster of small, pink flowers that only grow in this part of the forest.

The sun is still up, but soon the stars will start appearing, as evening falls. It’s going to be a pleasant night.

There’s a man sitting under a tree. Beside him, a young woman is animatedly moving her hands, a big smile on her face. She seems to be telling a story. It’s early evening, the sky not dark all the way yet, but a few stars can already be seen.

A ways away from them, a bonfire seems ready to be lit, people smiling and talking around it. Someone brings out a musical instrument, someone claps, someone shouts. There’s excitement all around, from another good harvest.

The young woman leaves the man sitting there, yelling, “I’ll be back in a minute, father!”

He waves her away, tells her not to worry. He has the stars to keep him company.

Up in the sky, the Arrow constellation shines away.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please, let me know what you think :3


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